Posted on 02/13/2014 5:53:44 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Valentine’s Day in the 21st century means fewer heart-shaped candy boxes for college women than they would have received in the 20th century. Some women with steady, longstanding boyfriends may get a treat, but casual sex — the hook-up — has made dating much less common.
Under the hook-up regime, women who want a man’s attention are expected to dress provocatively and show up at a fraternity house or bar. After drinking too much, some guy will suggest they go somewhere and hook up, which can consist of anything from deep kissing to intercourse. The men are not attentive during or after the one-night stand. Less than half the women have orgasms, and the men frequently ignore the hook-up partner entirely if they should meet again on campus.
Most college women are not happy about this state of affairs. This would be clear to any observer who could sit in on my sex-differences seminar during the week when we discuss contemporary courtship or its absence. This past fall, I asked 16 female seminar participants if they personally knew — not knew of, but knew — a woman who they thought had been very seriously harmed emotionally because of hook-ups. Every hand went up.
The men, typically, have no problems with hook-ups, and many vigorously pursue them. In class they tend to be quiet on the subject, but this year one tall, handsome fellow was willing to engage. He seemed to be speaking for all men he knew when he said “hook-ups aren’t going away.” But he was genuinely surprised and concerned that so many women were angry about them.
The literature on hook-ups shows that what I have observed at the University of Virginia is typical. In the book Premarital Sex in America, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker report that having more sexual partners is associated with “poorer emotional states in women, but not in men.” The more sexual partners a woman has in her lifetime, the more likely she is to be depressed, to cry almost every day, and to report relatively low satisfaction with her life as a whole. Elsewhere I have surveyed the evolutionary and hormonal factors that lead men and women to react so differently to casual sex.
But why do women have casual sex if they don’t want to? First, in their experimental phase, they don’t know that they won’t like it. Men and women in my upper-division classes agree that first-year women participate in hook-ups much more than fourth-years do. Some of the frat boys show up at freshman orientation events to get a head start on their seductions. A few even have a cute name for their prey: “fresh meat.”
Second, sex ratios matter. Now that women outnumber men on college campuses, they must compete with each other to give men more of what they want if they expect to find male companionship. Where there are more men than women on a campus, on the other hand, it’s men who have to compete, so women can successfully make things move more slowly physically. With sex ratios in college consistently lopsided over the past decade — women earn 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees — men set the mating tone on most campuses.
But young men haven’t always acted this way. In the middle of the last century, being a leader of a group of young men led to “comfortable dating, or perhaps early marriage,” Eleanor Maccoby writes, whereas the same social position today leads to “a greater readiness to exploit sexual opportunities and display sexual prowess.” By the time they reached their twenties, men used to settle down with one woman and raise a family. They used to be willing to answer to a wife and a boss for 40 to 50 hours a week for 40 to 50 years. But men famously hate to be told what to do. Why, then, did they so frequently become reliable partners?
They did it in midcentury because it was clearer what a man’s responsibilities were, and it was important work. Men were the providers and protectors and heads of the family; now they’re told they’re half the provider, sometimes less, and half the nurturer of the children — which they recognize as a cruel joke the moment they learn that, when they comfort her, the infant doesn’t stop crying as she does for her breast feeding mother. Working women have achieved important gains from these changes in behavior and expectations, but for men, going from head of the family to maybe half the provider and less than half with children doesn’t sound like a promotion. They may be slower to get with the program.
But, just as important, men settled down earlier in the past because they could not get good-looking and intelligent women to pay attention to them unless they had “prospects.” Men had to be marriageable and ready to commit to a relationship or most women would not have sex with them. Most men in their twenties still want marriage in the distant future, but they see no reason not to partake of the bodily charms of many attractive, intelligent women in the meantime. To bed women in our age, men find that good pectoral muscles (thus time in the gym) can be as useful as good career prospects (time in the library) — though with the shortage of men on college campuses, they may not need either.
The contemporary mating culture helps explain why men these days take so long to grow up. Sexual mores matter. Today’s lead to remarkably crude men, but also, and perhaps more significantly, remarkably juvenile ones.
The real tragedy is the effect that hook-ups have on the emotional well-being of so many women. Simon Baron Cohen’s The Essential Difference shows that, more than males, females crave connection to other humans from the first months of life, expressing instincts that are essential to happy families and supportive communities.
— Steven E. Rhoads is a professor of politics at the University of Virginia and the author of Taking Sex Differences Seriously.
Saw enough of this in high school in the 70s to know I wanted no part of this scene. The boys acted like cocky jerks, the girls like willing pieces of kleenex who suffered after the fact.
Nothing shocks my senses quite like this hook-up culture on college campi.
It’s hard to think of anything more cold, sterile, and impersonal. I have no idea what young people see in it.
If they even are your kids. But no matter, the government will make you support them even if they are some other guy's kids.
Marriage also tended to ensure that the average man got a woman of his own. In the current "hook up" culture, you have lots of women chasing after the most desirable men. This results in the "alpha" males getting lots of sex, and the "beta" males being ignored.
Unfortunately, a woman's marriage to a beta male was and is no guarantee the woman would stop having sex with alpha males on the side. That way she gets the best of both worlds: adultery to get alpha male genes for her children, while being married to a chump who will--often unknowingly--spend his resources raising those kids whose genes aren't even his.
Many women do this in reverse, too: they'll have children by alpha males--in or out of marriage to them--then with children in tow, and having "learned to appreciate" chumps who are good and meek providers, finds some chump to marry to pay for the raising of the alpha male(s) kids.
The best solution--and the natural one--is polygyny, in which true alpha males get to have more than one wife. This keeps the spririt of competition for the husband alive in the wives, thereby engaging them in a contest of which of them can best please the husband. It also ensures that many women can honestly, without having to cheat, endow their children with alpha male genes. And those are just a few of the benefits.
As for the beta males? Well, there will be a slight shortage of leftover homely females who would still cheat on them with an alpha if the opportunity arises (never marry a woman who travels for business, etc.), but that's the breaks.
And I believe even if you can prove the kid isn’t yours, the government will make you support it anyway.
No, you do not give lingerie unless you are really, really close as in married or engaged or about to pop the question close. Not unless you want a dark chocolate colored eye.
I have to agree. At least in a cathouse, it is clear who is buying and who is selling, what is acceptable and the prices attached to it.
A bad side to the feminist movement. Women are free to express themselves sexually. Well so are men. And men are less likely to look for a long term relationship when women are so free sexually.
Really? I thought a woman without a man was like a fish without a bicycle. At least that's what all the man-hating lesbian feminists that occupied my college back in the mid-70's told me.
(Great way to win someone over to your point of view, BTW--Insulting them right out of the gate.)
Exactly. The facts: there are easy women and there the marrying, long term relationship kind.
Interesting that the left push the easy kind as some kind of great thing, example: Sandra Fluke.
Ah yes. “JOC” night at the Mather AFB O Club.
“Stars and Bars” night at the Castle AFB O Club.
And even one “Animal Night” at NAS Miramar (you saw a version of THAT in “Top Gun”. I knew the “You’ve lost that Lovin’ Feeling” trick LONG before Tom Cruise did it on the big screen. . .)
I used to think that, but under our current system, I don't think there are any long termers.
To have women that behave over the long term, the man needs to be supported by society and by law.
Anything freely given can’t be given a high value.
Thus Fred Reed: "Bob likes his girlfriend... but he also likes his scuba gear."
Ladies, you wanted the rights and priveleges of being a man. Now they are yours to enjoy.
Sometimes. Also Chateau Heartiste.
Exactly. When women make themselves available to be used as receptacles, this is the result. They’ve been brainwashed into believing there are no differences between the sexes. But females do not and never will react to sex the way men do.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that if more girls WERE looking for their Mrs. degree, they would insist on at least SOME degree of respect from men.
The best solution--and the natural one--is polygyny, in which true alpha males get to have more than one wife. This keeps the spririt of competition for the husband alive in the wives, thereby engaging them in a contest of which of them can best please the husband. It also ensures that many women can honestly, without having to cheat, endow their children with alpha male genes. And those are just a few of the benefits.
No, the best solution is to ignore the alpha-chasing women, and refuse to be their "plan B".
The best solution has "adultery which results in cuckoldry" being grounds for divorce, with NO alimony and NO child support for children which are not biologically the husband's.
We see societies where polygyny is common, Muslim societies, and how well they work. A man who does not have the opportunity to have a family of his own, is a man who has no real stake in the survival of his society.
I hate those darned Hallmark(TM) holidays! Promoted to “holiday” status by the card and candy companies and the florists.
Plus, whenever I’m out seeking a gift for such occasions, my mind goes blank and I usually get the wrong thing.
< /curmudgeonry >
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